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Why Republicans Won’t Renounce Trump

Donald Trump speaking to the media on Tuesday night.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

When Donald Trump attacked a federal judge whose parents were born in Mexico, Hispanic Americans were outraged. Other minority groups saw a pattern of bigotry. Democrats had a hard time concealing their glee. Republican leaders pretended they disapproved.

Well, to be fair, they did disapprove in a way — not because Trump believes the things he says, but because he says them so directly.

Far too many Republicans share this kind of racism and have for a long time. Trump has just dispensed with dog whistles and revels in his bigotry instead. But this is the party the Republicans have been deliberately and assiduously building for many decades, the party of division and intolerance. George H.W. Bush’s racist tactics in 1988 against Michael Dukakis — the Willie Horton ad in particular — seem almost genteel by comparison.

Today’s Republicans have stymied every effort at reforming immigration, at achieving true equality for women, at ending the scourge of racist drug laws and criminal sentencing rules. The Republican Party has generated a wave of laws designed to make it harder for black Americans and other minorities to vote. It’s not that Republicans don’t want to deport millions of Mexicans and ban Muslims from our shores. They just don’t like to talk about it in the open.

So when Donald Trump started to attack Mexicans, Muslims and anyone else who popped into his head, Republican leaders may have thought it was bad tactics. But all that talk this year about the “Republican establishment” being aghast at Trump for his outlandish ideas was nonsense.

What really bothers Republicans is that Trump is not a member of their club and did not observe party discipline by saving his disdain for Democrats.

None of Trump’s Republican challengers, of course, had the vision, the guts or the personality to defeat him, and now it’s far too late. By the time Trump attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is hearing one of the lawsuits against Trump’s infomercial disguised as a university, the Republican leadership had long since painted itself into a corner.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, could not stir himself to call Trump’s comments racist. McConnell said on “Meet the Press” last Sunday that he did not agree with Trump that the judge should recuse himself, but that was all the interviewer could get out of what passes for a statesman in the G.O.P. these days.

Asked about one right-wing blogger who said Republicans were backing a racist candidate, McConnell simpered that what matters is winning the White House. “The right-of-center world needs to respect the fact that the primary voters have spoken,” he said.

Yes, in favor of blatant intolerance.

Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, who practically strained his back flipping from denouncing Trump to endorsing him, said that “claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”

Not so unacceptable that he is withdrawing his endorsement. “I believe that we have more common ground on the policy issues of the day and we have more likelihood of getting our policies enacted with him than we do with her,” he said, referring to Hillary Clinton.

Senator Tim Scott, the highest-ranking black Republican, would not revoke his endorsement after what he called “racially toxic” comments.

What about John McCain, whom Donald Trump once mocked for getting captured and tortured by the North Vietnamese? Surely he was outraged. Nope.

One or two Republicans dissented, but most of them are on the outs with their party anyway. Bill Kristol, the neoconservative commentator who evidently loathes Trump, tweeted: “Official position of the leadership of the Republican Party: Trump is an inexcusable bigot, and Trump must be our next president.”

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Given the cowardice of his fellow members of the party of Lincoln, Trump is, naturally, doubling down on running for racist in chief.

On Monday, Bloomberg Politics reported that Trump told campaign surrogates in a conference call to keep up the attack on Judge Curiel. And on Tuesday, he said in a statement, “It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage.” His evidence for his tolerance was, as usual, that he has lots of Mexican-Americans working for him.

Trump said he would not comment further on the lawsuit against Trump University or the judge. He doesn’t have to. Mission accomplished, as George W. Bush might say. But he obviously plans to go on riding this tiger — because he thinks it will take him into the White House; because he is engaged in a creepy act of self destruction to avoid actually having to be president, which is hard work; or simply because he enjoys making bigoted comments.

Supporters of Bernie Sanders who talk about voting for Trump instead of Clinton if their candidate finally decides to drop out should consider this latest episode, and Trump’s larger pattern, carefully. They should know they would be voting for a racist.